Separate Flights

by Andre Dubus

  But her face was not the face of someone confessing. In her smile, which appeared intentionally hesitant, intentionally vulnerable, and in the crinkling tan flesh at the corners of her eyes, in the wide green eyes themselves, and in the tone of finality in her throaty voice—there: now it’s out, I’ve told you everything, that’s how much I care, the voice said; her smacking of the table with a palm said—Miranda sensed a coaxing trick that she did not want to understand. But she did understand and she sat hating her mother, whose eyes and smile were telling her that making love with Michaelis was a natural but subsidiary part of growing up; that finally what she felt that night and since (and before: the long, muddled days and nights when she was not so much trying to decide but to free herself so she could make love without deciding) amounted now to nothing more than anxiety over baby fat and pimples. It meant nothing. Miranda this fall meant nothing. She would outgrow the way she felt. She would look back on those feelings with amused nostalgia as she could now look back on grapefruit and cottage cheese, and the creams she had applied on her face at night, the camouflaging powder during the day.

  ‘You see,’ her father said, ‘we don’t object to you having a lover. Hell, we can’t. What scares us, though, is you being unhappy: and the odds are that you will be. Now think of it the other way. Try to, sweetheart. I’ve never forced you to do anything—I’ve never been able to—and I’m not forcing you now. I only want you to look at it from a different side for a while. You and Mother fly to New York—’ She felt sentenced to death. Her legs were cool and weak, her heart beat faster within images of her cool, tense body under lights, violated.‘—the pill, then you’re safe. Both of you. You have three years to grow. You can go back to school—’

  ‘To be what?’ she said. ‘To be what,’ and she wiped her eyes.

  ‘That’s exactly it,’ her mother said. ‘You don’t know yet what you want to be but you say you’re ready to get married.’

  She had not said that. She had said something altogether different, though she couldn’t explain it, could not even explain it to herself. When they said married they were not talking about her. That was not what she wanted. Perhaps she wanted nothing. Except to be left alone as she was in Boston to listen to the fearful pulsations of her body; to listen to them; to sleep with them; wake with them. It was not groceries. She saw brown bags, cans. That was not it. She watched Michaelis. He was listening to them, and in his eyes she saw relieved and grateful capitulation. In his eyes that night his passion was like fear. He was listening to them, he was nodding, and now they were offering the gift, wrapped in her father’s voice: ‘—So much better that way, so much more sensible. And this Christmas, say right after Christmas, you could go to Acapulco. Just the two of you. It’s nice at that time of year, you know? It could be your Christmas present. The trip could.’

  She smiled before she knew she was smiling; slightly she shook her head, feeling the smile like a bandage: they were giving her a honeymoon, her honeymoon lover in the Acapulco hotel after he had been sucked from her womb. She would have cried, but she felt dry inside, she was tired, and she knew the night was ended.

  ‘I was afraid on Mulholland Drive. I was afraid in Boston. It was the most important thing there was. How I was afraid all the time.’ Her parents’ faces were troubled with compassion; they loved her; in her father’s eyes she saw her own pain. ‘I kept wanting not to be afraid, and it was all I thought about. Then I stopped wanting that. I was afraid, and it was me, and it was all right. Now we can go to Acapulco.’ She looked at Michaelis. He looked at her, guilty, ashamed; then he looked at her parents as though to draw from them some rational poise; but it didn’t work, and he lowered his eyes to his beer can. ‘Michaelis? Do you want to go to Acapulco?’

  Still he looked down. He had won and lost, and his unhappy face struggled to endure both. He shrugged his shoulders, but only slightly, little more than a twitch, as if in mid-shrug he had realized what a cowardly gesture the night had brought him to. That was how she would most often remember him: even later when she would see him, when she would make love with him (but only one more time), she would not see the nearly healed face he turned to her, but his face as it was now, the eyes downcast; and his broad shoulders in their halted shrug.

  It was not remorse she felt. It was dying. In the mornings she woke with it, and as she brushed her hair and ate yogurt or toast and honey and coffee and walked with Holly to school as the November days grew colder, she felt that ropes of her own blood trailed from her back and were knotted in New York, on that morning, and that she could not move forward because she could not go back to free herself. And she could not write to Michaelis. She tried, and she wrote letters like this:—the lit exam wasn’t as hard as I expected. I love reading the Greeks. The first snow has fallen, and it’s lovely and I like looking out the window at it and walking in it. I’ve learned to make a snow angel. You lie on your back in the snow and you spread your arms and legs, like doing jumping jacks, and then you stand up carefully and you’ve left an angel in the snow, with big, spreading wings. Love, Miranda. When she wrote love she wanted to draw lines through it, to cover it with ink, for she felt she was lying. Or not that. It was the word that lied, and when she shaped it with her pen she felt the false letters, and heard the hollow sound of the word.

  She did not like being alone anymore. Before, she had liked coming home in the late afternoon and putting on records and studying or writing to Michaelis or just lying on the couch near the sunset window until Holly came home. But now that time of day (and it was a dark time, winter coming, the days growing short) was like the other time: morning, waking, when there was death in her soul, in her blood, and she thought of the dead thing she wouldn’t call by name, and she wished for courage in the past, wished she had gone somewhere alone, New Hampshire or Maine, a small house in the woods, and lived alone with the snow and the fireplace and a general store down the road and read books and walked in the woods while her body grew, and it grew. She would not call it anything even when she imagined February’s swollen belly; that would be in June; the second of June. Already she would not think June when she knew she would say: Today is probably the day my baby would have been born. So she could not be alone anymore, not even in this apartment she loved, this city she loved.

  She thought of it as a gentle city. And she felt gentle too, and tender. One morning she saw a small yellow dog struck by a car; the dog was not killed; it ran yelping on three legs, holding up the fourth, quivering, and Miranda could feel the pain in that hind leg moving through the cold air. She could not see blood in movies anymore. She read the reviews, took their warnings, stayed away. Sometimes when she saw children on the street she was sad; and there were times when she longed for her own childhood. She remembered what it was like not knowing anything, and she felt sorry for herself because what she knew now was killing her, she felt creeping death in her breast, and bitterly she regretted the bad luck that had brought her this far, this alone; and so she wanted it all to be gone, November and October and September, she wanted to be a virgin again, to go back even past that, to be so young she didn’t know virgin from not-virgin. She knew this was dangerous. She knew that nearly everything she was feeling now was dangerous, and so was her not-feeling: her emptiness when she wrote to her parents and Michaelis; in classrooms she felt abstract; when people came to the apartment she talked with them, she got high with them, but she was only a voice. She neither greeted them nor told them goodbye with her body; she touched no one; or, if she did, she wasn’t aware of it; if anyone touched her they touched nothing. One night as she was going to bed stoned she said to Holly: ‘I’m a piece of chalk.’ She thought of seeing a psychiatrist but believed (had to believe) that all this would leave her.

  On days when she got home before Holly, she put on music and spent every moment waiting for Holly. Sometimes, waiting, she drank wine or smoked a pipe, and the waiting was not so bad; although sometimes with wine it was worse, the wine seemed to rel
ax her in the wrong way, so that her memory and dread and predictions were even sharper, more cruel. With dope the waiting was always easier. She was worried about drinking alone, smoking alone; but she was finally only vaguely worried. The trouble she was in was too deep for her to worry about its surfaces. When Holly came home, short of breath from climbing the stairs, her fair cheeks reddened from the cold and her blonde hair damp with snow like drops of dew, Miranda talked and talked while they cooked, and she ate heartily, and felt that eating was helping her, as though she were recovering from an illness of the flesh.

  Her parents and Michaelis wanted her to fly home at Thanksgiving but she went to Maine with Diane, a friend from school. Holly told her parents she was going too, and she went to Rhode Island with Tom. Diane’s parents lived in a large brick house overlooking the sea. They were cheerful and affluent, and they were tall and slender like Diane, who had freckles that were fading as winter came. There was a younger brother who was tall and quiet and did not shave yet, and his cheeks were smooth as a girl’s. Around him Miranda felt old.

  She had never seen the Atlantic in winter. On Thanksgiving morning she woke before Diane and sat at the window. The sky was gray, a wind was blowing, the lawn sloping down to the sea was snow, and the wind blew gusts of it like powder toward the house. The lawn ended at the beach, at dark rocks; the rocks went out into the sea, into the gray, cold waves. Beyond the rocks she saw a seal swimming. She watched it, sleek and brown and purposeful, going under, coming up. She quickly dressed in corduroy pants and sweater and boots and coat and went downstairs; she heard Diane’s parents having coffee in the kitchen, and quietly went outside and down the slippery lawn to the narrow strip of sand and the rocks. But the seal was gone. She stood looking out at the sea. Once she realized she had been daydreaming, though she could not recall what it was she dreamed; but for a minute or longer she had not known where she was, and when she turned from her dreaming to look at the house, to locate herself, there was a moment when she did not know the names of the people inside. Then she began walking back and forth in front of the house, looking into the wind at the sea. Before long a light snow came blowing in on the salt wind. She turned her face to it. I suppose I don’t love Diane, she told herself. For a moment I forgot her name.

  Then it was December, a long Saturday afternoon that was gray without snow, and Holly was gone for the weekend. In late afternoon Miranda left the lighted apartment and a paper she was writing and walked up Beacon Street. The street and sidewalks were wet and the gutters held gray, dirty snow. She walked to the Public Garden where there were trees and clean snow, and on a bridge over a frozen pond she stopped and watched children skating. Then she walked through the Garden and across the street to the Common; the sidewalks around it were crowded, the Hare Krishna people were out too, with their shaved heads and pigtails and their robes in the cold, chanting their prayer. She did not see any winos. In warm weather they slept on the grass or sat staring from benches, wearing old, dark suits and sometimes a soiled hat. But now they were gone, and where, she wondered, did they go when the sky turns cold? She walked across the Common to the State House; against the gray sky its gold dome looked odd, like something imported from another country. Then she walked home. Already dusk was coming, and she didn’t want to be alone. When she got home Brian was ringing the doorbell.

  ‘Holly’s not here,’ she said.

  ‘I know. Are you here?’

  ‘Sometimes. Come on up.’

  He was tall and he wore a fatigue jacket. She looked away from his face, reached in her pocket for the key; she felt him wanting her, it was like a current from his body, and she felt it as she opened the door and as they climbed the stairs. In the apartment she gave him a beer.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I am. If I cook something, will you eat it?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘There’s chicken. Is chicken all right? Broiled?’

  ‘Chicken? Why not?’

  He followed her to the kitchen. While she cooked they talked and he had another beer and she drank wine. She wasn’t hungry anymore. She knew something would happen and she was waiting for it, waiting to see what she would do. She cooked and they ate and then went to the living room and smoked a pipe on the couch. When he took off her sweater she nearly said let’s go to bed, but she didn’t. She closed her eyes and waited and when he was undressed she kissed his bearded face. Her eyes were closed. She felt wicked and that excited her; he was very thin; her body was quick and wanton; but her heart was a stone; her heart was a clock; her heart was a watching eye. Then he shuddered and his weight rested on her and she said: ‘You bastard.’

  He left her. He sat at the end of the couch, at her feet; he took a swallow of beer and leaned back and looked at the ceiling.

  ‘I saw it downstairs,’ he said. ‘You wanted to ball.’

  ‘Don’t call it that.’

  He looked at her; then he leaned over and picked up his socks.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Call it that.’ He put on his socks. ‘Say it again.’

  ‘What are you playing?’

  ‘I’m not. I don’t play anymore. It’s all—What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m putting on my pants.’ He was standing, buckling his belt. He picked up his sweater from the floor.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m cold.’

  ‘Get dressed.’

  ‘I don’t want you to go. Let’s get in bed.’

  ‘That’ll be the second time tonight I do something you want me to. Will I be a bastard again?’

  ‘No. I’m just screwed up, Brian, that’s all.’

  ‘Who isn’t?’

  In bed he was ribs and hip bone against her side and she liked resting her head on his long hard arm.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he said. ‘You worried about that guy in California?’

  ‘He’s not there anymore.’

  ‘Where’d he go?’

  ‘He’s still there. Things happened.’

  ‘Have you had many guys?’

  ‘Just him and you. You won’t tell Holly, will you?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘How long have you been in school?’

  ‘Six years, on and off.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘They haven’t told me yet.’

  ‘Michaelis is going to be a lawyer.’

  ‘Good for him.’

  ‘I used to love him.’

  ‘Figures.’

  ‘He’s going to work with Chicanos. I won’t be with him now. For a whole year I thought about that. I was going to marry him and have a baby and carry it like a papoose on the picket lines. We wouldn’t have much money. That was it for a whole year and I was feeling all that when I made love with him, it was my first time and I hurt and I bled and I probably wasn’t any good, but my God I felt wonderful. I felt like I was going to heaven.’

  ‘You better cheer up, man. There’s other guys.’

  ‘Oh yes, I know: there are other guys. Miranda will have other guys.’

  Her heart did not change: not that night when they made love again, nor Sunday morning waking to his hands. Late Sunday night Holly came home and Miranda woke up but until Holly was undressed and in bed she pretended she was asleep so Holly wouldn’t turn on the lights. Then she pretended to wake up because she wanted to talk to Holly before, in the morning, she saw her face.

  ‘How was your weekend?’

  ‘Fine. What did you do?’

  ‘Stayed in the apartment and studied.’

  She lit a cigarette. Holly came over and took one from the pack. Miranda did not look at her: she closed her eyes and smoked and felt the sour cold of the lie. Holly was back in bed, talking into the distance of the lie, and Miranda listened and answered and lay tense in bed, for she was so many different Mirandas: the one with Holly now and the one who made love with Brian (balled; balled; she was sore) and the one who didn’t want to make love with Bri
an (b—); and beneath or among those there were perhaps two other Mirandas, and suddenly she almost cried, remembering September and October when she was afraid but she was one Miranda Jones. She sat up quickly, too quickly, so that Holly stopped talking and then said: ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing. I just want another cigarette.’

  ‘You should get out next weekend.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Come to Providence with me.’

  ‘What would I do?’

  ‘I don’t know. Whatever you do here. And we can get you a date.’

  ‘Maybe I will. Probably I won’t, though.’

  Tuesday after dinner Brian came over. He sat on the couch with Holly, and Miranda faced them from a chair. She tried not to look directly at him but she could not help herself: she drank too much beer and she watched him. He kept talking. Her nakedness was not in his face. She felt it was in hers, though, when Holly’s hand dropped to his thigh and rested there. She was not jealous; she did not love Brian; she felt as though something were spilled in the room, something foul and shameful, and no one dared look at it, and no one would clean it up. I’m supposed to be cool, she told herself as she went to the refrigerator and opened three cans of beer. She opened Brian’s last. It was his because it was on the left and she would carry it in her left hand and she remembered his hands. I am not for this world, she thought. Or it isn’t for me. It’s not because I’m eighteen either. Michaelis is twenty-two; he will get brown in the sun talking to Chicanos, he will smell of beer and onions, but his spirit won’t rise; Michaelis is of the world, he will be a lawyer.